The Spheres of Revelation and
Science. What Are Their Limitations In Relation to Each Other
R. E. D. CLARK, M.A., Ph.D.

From: JASA 5 (June1953): 8-17.

This article by Dr. Clark is the Gunning Prize Essay for
1946 and appears in the Transactions of the Victoria Institute,
Volume 79, pages 138166 (1947) including discussions.

EDITOR'S
NOTE:
Among the articles published in the Journal
it is planned to include an occasional reprint from the Transactions
of
the Victoria Institute.
The Transactions are
not readily available to many of our readers. By these reprints we hope to bring to a wider audience some excellent
material as well as to gain an acquaintance with our brethren
in other countries and their works. Permission to reprint has
been granted by the Victoria Institute through the efforts of
Dr. Brian P. Sutherland.

I

In the middle ages knowledge was a unity. Every
branch of science was interpreted in terms of Theology,
the queen of sciences. Free speculation was, indeed,
allowed but only on condition that hypotheses that did
not fit into the general framework were to be regarded
as amusing pastimes rather than as sober truth. Men
were free to work out the consequences of a heliocentric system in astronomy if they wished to do so but
they were not free to say that the heliocentric system
was true and the geocentric false. To adopt such an
attitude was to set oneself up against the teaching of
learned theologians and was therefore an indefensible
act of pride. The task of the investigator was to invent
hypotheses to "save appearances" (salvaxe apparenflas), that is to say to cover the observed facts adequately, not to provide explanations of the nature of
things (in esse et secundum rem).

Modern science was born when men like Bruno and
Galileo boldly asserted that their hypotheses were not
mere speculations but that their studies were actually
leading to ultimate truth. It was this claim that at
once produced friction with the church. In addition,
the church has always stood for a policy of secrecy.
Speculations, even if they were not asserted to be true,
could be published only for the benefit of learned men.
Attempts to bring them to the attention of the masses
were forbidden lest they should prove dangerous in
undermining the church's authority. Much of the early
friction between science and religion was caused by
the fact that men of science had the temerity to assert,
not only that experiments and observations could lead
men to truth, but that truth, once discovered, was to
be made available for all.

As Sir Henry Dale has pointed out,1 the fact that
science won one of its first great battles against the
policy of secrecy, is not irrelevant to the situation in
our modern world. Today, as in time past, we find that
certain scientific ideas are regarded as dangerous by
the politicians, so that there is once again a determined
effort to reimpose secrecy. What the outcome of the
present struggle will be we do not yet know, but many
leading men of science are reaching the conclusion
that the welfare of science is once again at stake.

We have seen that, until the beginning of the modern
era, theology had everything her own way. She knew
no limitations. She claimed an absolute right to insist
that the view-points in all other subjects should be so
adjusted that nothing should conflict with the dictates of the Church. Science, on the other hand, had
no real freedom. The man of learning was free to speculate for
the sake of speculation alone, he was not at liberty to claim that his speculations
corresponded with reality
unless they were also in agreement with the doctrines
of the church.

Into this world the scientific renaissance introduced
what must then have appeared to be as a fundamentally
new approach to knowledge. Our outlook has now
altered so greatly that it is difficult to realize the
degree of originality involved.

When, today, we begin the study of a new branch of
knowledge we often try to examine the facts before us
in what we call an "unprejudiced" way. By this we
mean that we must make a deliberate attempt not to
carry over from our previous studies a large number
of preconceived notions into which the facts can only
be made to fit with the aid of a good deal of "special
pleading." Rather than "teach" nature how to work,
we try to let nature "teach" us.

This attitude has become thoroughly ingrained in
our manner of thinking. Even among people who profess no academic outlook, it has become almost proverbial to say that facts are more important than
theories, which is, of course, an expression of the same
idea.

When we examine the matter in further detail, we
find that there have been several phases in the development of the new approach. In their early days the
various sciences developed more or less independently.
The fundamental ideas of mechanics, of magnetism, of
electricity, and of chemistry were each chosen in such
a manner as to make the actual facts of these respective sciences as intelligible as possible. It did not matter
if, for instance, the attraction of magnets for pieces of
iron, or of the earth for the moon, seemed unconnected
with the attraction of hydrogen for oxygen. Forces of
attraction and repulsion, ethers to convey these forces,
magnetic poles, electric charges, unconnected units of
mass, length and time, new types of valency binding
atoms together, and many other things, were simply
invented ad hoe as and when required and their appropriate laws were then determined. In this early
phase, little or no attempt was made to prevent the
multiplication of arbitrary starting points for scientific explanation. A scientific worker was free to postulate a magnetic pole simply because the properties of
magnets could best be described in terms of such poles:
he did not come to the study of magnetism imbued
with the principles of mechanics and determined, at
all costs, to explain the force between two magnets
in terms of a rate of change of momentum.

At a later stage a reaction set in. By the middle of
the nineteenth century it was recognized, wisely, that
if new principles of explanation were allowed to multiply indefinitely, science would, in the end, cease to
explain anything at all. In consequence it came to be
regarded as highly unorthodox to introduce even one
new entity or principle of explanation. It was implicitly
assumed that the first investigators of science had
discovered all the basic principles that could possibly
exist and any innovator who tried to introduce another
was at once met with the well-worn Latin tag: "Entia
non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" (entities
must not be multiplied beyond necessity)-the principle
usually referred to as "Occam's razor".

But entities had already been multiplied beyond
necessity-beyond necessity, at any rate, in the light
of later scientific developments. As science advanced,
the various pigeon-holed ideas upon which it had been
founded were extended in various directions and, at
length, inevitably, the different branches of science
began to impinge upon one another's spheres of interest.

The results of this "clash" between the sciences are
now well known.2 The propagation of light could only
be explained by supposing that light consisted of vibrations in an ether which had a density of a million
million times that of water and a rigidity much greater
than that of steel. Magnetism also required an ether,
but this ether had to be pictured as capable of streaming along tubes of f orce and so was entirely devoid of
rigidity. It is hardly necessary to discuss the subsequent history of these theories here. The important
point is that, at first, the various branches of knowledge, each making use of concepts invented for its
own benefit alone, led to contradictory results as the
various lines of enquiry were independently pursued.
What happened at the end of the 19th century, was
only an example of what has happened many times,
both before and since, and of what is, in fact, still
happening.

In a sense the "clash" between the sciences is closely
parallel to the "clash" between science and religion.
As Professor Dingle has ably urged,3 the languages of
modern science and of religion are both attempts to
describe and explain our experiences in the terms which
seem most appropriate to the study at hand-sense
data and religious experience. It is not likely, therefore,
that when these studies are pursued, borderline cases
will be discovered in which, at first sight, disagreement
is apparent. Such disagreements become possible when
religious and scientific explanations of the early ages
of the world, of apparent recorded miracles, of unusual
events involving the minds of men (e.g., the conversion
of St. Paul), and put forward from the two different
points of view.

However, just as the disagreement, between the
various sciences, has often been reconciled by subsequent, and more extended examination, so the religiously minded person has usually felt that, if all
the facts were known, no disagreement between science
and religion would ultimately remain. The doctrine
that such an inconsistency is ultimately inconceivable,
has, indeed, received a great deal of support from the
surprising, and indeed wonderful, way in which unification between some of the sciences has already been
effected. It is this fact which, to many minds, makes
the "modernist" approach to the Bible seem unreasonable. The "modernist" theologian gives the impression
that whenever he finds an apparent inconsistency he
feels that it is the duty of the religious part of him to
retreat. If the religious explanations of the early ages
of the world or of the psychology of the religious life
clash with the best conjectures of present day science
-well, it is taken as a sure sign that religion, and not
science, is transcending its proper limits. The Christian
is told that he must be humble enough to admit that
he has used his religious concepts in a sphere to which
they cannot be applied. But if theology and science
are both attempts to describe and explain experiences,
why should religious explanations alone be confined
rigidly to their own field? If disagreements result need they disconcert us more than do the numerous
disagreements between different branches of science?
How does the "modernist" come by his mysterious
conviction that further knowledge will not result in
perfect reconciliation?

II

Thus the development of the physical sciences in
reality gave rise to two schools of thought-only it
chanced that the two schools were not contemporaneous but historically separated. First of all there
were those who insisted that, when a new subject was
being studied, it was legitimate to allow the subject
itself to dictate what
ultimate units of thought would
have to be used in its development. Later, as the
principle of "Occam's razor" came to be ruthlessly
applied this policy was reversed Instead of inventing
new entities, desperate attempts were
explain the new in terms of the old.

Both these points of view had their influence upon
the newer non-exact sciences-but here the two schools
of thought have for long existed side by side. As we
shall have to refer to them frequently, we shall, for
want of better terms, refer to them as the mechanistic and the ad hoe points of view respectively.

According to the first, or mechanistic view, biology,
being a complex subject, can only be understood in
terms of the simpler ideas of physics and chemistry.
The biologist has no right to invent ad hoe categories
of thought to explain phenomena in which he happens
to be particularly interested. This point of view was,
of course that adopted by the naive materialist for
whom man was simply a machine,
but a machine for all that.

According to the second or ad hoc point of view the
biologist has perfect freedom to introduce whatever
fundamental principles will best explain the facts with
which he has to deal. The right to do this has, of
course, been claimed since early times-we find it in
Aristotle's entelechy, in all classical systems of logic
and ethics and, in our own age, we see its influence in
the form of the various life forces, instincts, etc., which
have been postulated times without number.

In the earlier part of the present century there was
a tendency for the more unemotional and disciplined
thinker to show an active dislike of the ad hoe point of
view. It was claimed, and claimed rightly, that it
tended towards undisciplined thought. It was always
easy enough to postulate a psychic entity arranging
molecules in the body, to explain sleep by a dormative
principle or to dismiss conduct in terms of instincts,
but how could such unbridled speculation be subjected
to any tests whatsoever? Were not all these supposed
explanations mere verbal ways of restating the original
facts in polysyllabic words? If physics and chemistry
cannot yet explain the obvious facts of biology which
call aloud for explanation, may this not simply be
because the latter science is still in its infancv?4

Despite the cogency of these objections, there have
always been many biologists who were prepared to
ignore them and recent developments in the physical
sciences have, apparently, greatly strengthened their
position. Today it is at last possible to see the early
development of science in its historical perspective.
We can now appreciate how the various physical sciences, leading to different and apparently inconsistent
sets of fundamental ideas have been combined by the
principle of relativity. Magnetic forces, postulated to
explain the phenomena associated with magnetism, are
now seen to be a property of electricity in motion.
Chemical affinity, invented to explain the combination
of chemical elements, turns out to be none other than
the familiar force associated with the interaction of
electric charges. Statistical mechanics have shown that
the two concepts of amount of heat and temperature can be derived from the ordinary laws of mechanics.

In these and numerous other instances we see how
different sciences have created their own concepts and
have developed the laws of connection between them.
In the first place the concepts were of an ad hoc character, but, in time, they were seen to be consequences
of other and more fundamental branches of knowledge.

Facts of this kind have naturally encouraged the
biologist to do what has already been done so successfully in otherfields. Accordingly, he is today more insistent than ever before that he has a right to choose
the concepts which he finds most convenient in his
work and to leave to future scientific workers the task
of reconciling his newly invented concepts with the
established principles of science.

Thus ad hoc science has received a new lease of life.
As examples of its development we may cite the
psychology of Freud, with its welter of ad hoc concepts (unconscious mind, ego, id, libido, complexes, etc.);
the idea of gestalt in experimental psychology around
which a vast literature has already grown up (Thorndike, E. S. Russell, Kohler, Koffka, etc.); the entelechy
of Driesch postulated to explain the development of
the embryo, the idea of organism as a whole developed
by J. S. Haldane and of teleology in nature (to be
taken as existing alone without any implication of a
plan or mind at the back of nature) sponsored by L. J.
Henderson. Finally, mention should be made of the
idea of evolution which also cannot at present be correlated with non-biological principles.

In these and many other instances we find that men
of science have boldly invented ad hoc concepts and
have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to
discover the laws connecting them with one another.
But in nearly every case they have been content to
shelve fundamental questions as to the nature of the
new concepts which have been so easily, and often
uncritically, introduced.

The new drift towards ad hoc science has naturally
produced a corresponding philosophy. In this connection the holism of General Smuts and more especially
important still the emergent evolution of Lloyd Morgan must here be mentioned. According to the last named
theory we must conceive of nature as a series of
hierarchies. The lowest level is that of atomic nuclei
and electrons. These produce atoms, these molecules
and these crystals. "Liquid crystals," complex liquid,
fat and carbohydrate molecules and, finally, living
matter, form yet further representatives of organisation levels. Living matter itself, starting with the
most simple forms and passing upward until we reach
the mind of man, provides the more developed subdivisions of the hierarchy. At each level, so we are told,
scientific laws appropriate to that level may be found.
Some of these laws, so Morgan says, are deducible from
the laws of matter found to hold at a lower level, but
many are not and then the laws can only be discovered
at the levels, or on levels still higher than those in
which they begin to operate.5

In the so-called philosophy of dialectical materialism
we find a closely similiar attitude. Engels and Lenin
had no patience with traditional materialisin.6 They
claimed that when a physical quantity (heat, light,
complexity, etc.) is gradually increasd in a system,
there must come a time when a new and unpredictable
phenomenon is suddenly encountered. This is, of
course, a statement of the Hegelian law that "quantity
turns into quality" and on this view life is simply a
property of chemical molecules which have a certain
degree of complexity.

III

We have now considered two of the three possible
attitudes which a scientific worker may adopt towards
a new branch of study. When we ask questions about
the limitations of science, it is obvious that we must
first of all possess clear ideas as to what we mean by
"science". If, on the one hand, our approach is primarily
mechanistic, we shall very soon find that science is
faced with limitations when it seeks to advance into
new fields of investigation. Not only will limitations of
a purely practical kind be encountered immediately for our science may be at too early a stage of development to enable it to deal with complex
phenomena but there will also be the much more fundamental difficulty that it will be unable to deal with sets of ideas
of an unfamiliar character.

If, on the other hand, we are always prepared to
adopt the ad hoe, approach in science, it is clear that
our science can know no limitations whatsoever. No
matter with what phenomena we are dealing, it will
always be possible to invent suitable categories of
thought for the sole purpose of describing these
phenomena and, if we can find (or think we can find)
relations of any kind between the concepts so facilely
invented-well, they constitute the embryonic form of
a developing science. Clearly even religion is not
immune from such treatment. The old mechanistic
science was disposed to argue away the existence of
spiritual values, the newer ad hoe science is simply
prepared to accept them at their face value.

We must now consider briefly a third attitude which
we may adopt towards a new line of scientific enquiry
-the attitude implied by the word positivism.

According to the doctrine known as positivism, we
can never know the real world behind appearances.
All we should do, therefore, is to confine our attention
to the things that we do know, the sensa, of experience.
It is useless, in physics, to try to find out anything
about the ether, so we must express all our facts in
the form that observers would see them and this
involves giving up the idea of a velocity of an electromagnetic wave with respect to the ether. Similarly we
cannot know, because we cannot determine, the precise
position or velocity of a small particle so we must
express ourselves only in terms of probabilities which,
by taking a sufficient number of observations, can
actually be measured.

Positivism has long had a certain vogue but the new
developments in physics-though they have hardly
tended to revive Mach's thoroughgoing scientific positivism-have had interesting repercussions on antitheological thought. Many writers and thinkers are
beginning to state quite blatantly that since man cannot reach the ultimate truth about things, spiritual
values must just be accepted as we find them without
asking any questions as to where they come from or
how they arise. Olaf Stapledon,7 for instance, compares
these values to the primitive beliefs about the stability
of the earth. We can accept the earth, he says, without
having to believe that it rests upon the back of a tortoise which is, in turn, squatting on the back of another
tortoise and so ad infinitum. So why not accept spiritual
values without asking questions as to their origin?

Precisely the same point of view has been put forward repeatedly with regard to the
universe.8 If we
follow the tradition of positivism it becomes quite
illegitimate to ask where the universe came from or
how it was created. The only relevant fact is that the
universe is here, so that there is no need to ask where
it came from. In the same way teleology in nature
can be accepted without attempting to account for its
origin.

In recent years even right and wrong have been defined in terms of their influence upon evolutionary
progress-a right course of action being of assistance
to evolution and vice versa.9 In this way the unobservable principles of right and wrong can be eliminated
and in their place we are simply left with observable
(or potentially observable) effects on evolution.

For the same reason it is often asserted10 that the old
discussions about mind and body are now completely
out of date. No longer is ft necessary to ask whether
scientific evidence supports the view that mind is a
spiritual entity inhabiting a material body, for from
the modern point of view such a question is completely
meaningless. Positivist science must confine itself to
tangible things: the phenomenon of mind is definite
enough but it is unscientific to invoke intangible souls
and spirits which may prove to have no more objective
existence than the 19th century ether. To ask questions
about discarnate minds is to come to nature with preconceived ideas whereas the true investigator should
keep his mind open and be prepared to learn from
nature, not to force nature to conform to prearranged
grooves of thought. "The chances are thousands to one
that all our most carefully conceived ideas on these
subjects are more false than true."11

IV

From this discussion it will be seen that the ad hoc
and the positivist attitudes towards science may both
serve for the repudiation of theological ideas and, in
point of fact, we often find that the two attitudes
are held together in a single person's mind while both
are supposed to represent the culmination of 20th
century scientific thought. But, for all this, they are
strange bed-fellows as we shall shortly see. The only
real agreement between them lies in the fact that
both of them enable people to avoid all discussion of
the old problems of science and religion. Souls, discarnate spirits, freewill and the Diety Himself are
unnecessary postulates if we are at liberty to invent
ad hoc causative principles which operate only at the
levels of organisation at which they are invoked. They
are equally objectionable if it is the duty of the
scientist to keep his science free from unobservables.

Nevertheless, despite the superficial agreement, the ad hoc and positivist attitudes are really mutually
contradictory. This is at once obvious when we reflect
that such ideas as unconscious mind, psychological
complex, evolution, and many other similar concepts
refer to things which are unobservable and should
therefore be repugnant to the positivist. It is difficult
indeed to resist the conviction that many modern
writers use which ever of the two attitudes best serves
the purpose of the moment when they wish to discredit
theology. Professor J. D. Bernal's remark to the effect
that "the invocation of God-just because it can be
done when faced with any intellectual or moral difficulty whatever removed any necessity for a rational
treatment of the world"12 is every bit as much criticism
of ad hoc science as of theology. Yet the ad hoc scientist often thoughtlessly repeats the criticism.

V

We have seen that both ad hoc and positivist science
are all-inclusive schemes of thought which by their
very nature can know no limitations in respect of
theology or of any other branch of study. The first
invokes new principles as required, in order to explain
phenomena in complex cases and in this way it succeeds in avoiding ultimate issues. The pious hope that
a future Einstein will one day discover the fundamental relations between the new ideas and the old is a
hope only and, as we shall shortly see, it is a hope that
can never be realised. Positivism, on the other hand,
avoids the asking of fundamental questions by the
simple expedient of denying that they are of any
interest and insisting that attention should be focused
entirely on the things of sense. It is all-inclusive because it denies the existence of
theology.13

The deficiences of these types of science are such
that we may well ask why they have become so
popular, seeing that neither of them really achieves the
most fundamental aim of science-the satisfaction of
human curiosity.

The reason is probably to be sought along the following lines. In the present century mechanistic science
has reached an impasse-a fact freely admitted by
nearly everyone today. The early hope of the materialist that mechanistic science would prove all-embracing
has turned out to be false for its limitations have become obvious in a number of directions. The discoveries
of the past twenty years have, in fact, made it practically impossible to conceive that any possible modification of the old science will enable it to explain
all phenomena.

In this connection the work on the brain initiated by
Lashley is particularly relevant. At one time it seemed
possible to conceive of the brain as an enormously
complex telephone exchange. Experiences made more
or less permanent connections between the "wires,"
thus setting up "conditioned reflexes". Today this view
is universally considered to be quite untenable. If mem
ory is dependent upon connections between nerve fibres
then, when the brain is partly destroyed, the fibres
connected with a particular reflex, should either be
disconnected or not disconnected. Now if a rat learns
how to extricate itself from a particular maze, and a
part of its brain is then destroyed, the memory loss is
found to be dependent upon the amount of destruction
and not upon the position of that destruction. Again,
in man, there is only one part of the brain in which
there is a rigid point to point connection between sensory fibres and the cells of the brain, and that is in the
occipital region, the cells of which are individually
connected with the rods and cones of the retina. Yet
even here, when a squint develops, or when one half
of the retina is destroyed, the mind can reorganize the
entire meaning of the impulses which reach the brain,
despite the fact that the physical connections remain
unaltered.

Facts of this kind, to which we should add the
experimental proof of telepathy in recent years, show
only too clearly that mechanistic thought is unlikely
ever to explain even the simplest mental phenomenon,
let alone the existence of spiritual values or the sense
of right and wrong. Bearing in mind the long history
of enmity between science and religion that was stirred
up in the latter part of the 19th century, it is natural
enough that rationalistic scientists of today have
abandoned mechanistic science which, by its very
failure, obviously opens the door widely for the entry
of theological ideas. It is no wonder that the ad hoc
and even the positivist attitudes to science have found favor.

We must never forget, however, that in extending
its scope in these ways, science is weakening its powers.
Ad hoe hypotheses become increasingly of a purely
verbal kind, affording no real understanding of the
factors involved. Moreover, from the point of view of
the traditionalist the new attitude is simply a case of
special pleading. Instead of trying to find out whether
such entities as minds do in fact exist apart from matter, it is pretended that all such questions are meaningless, whereas they are actually assumed to be untrue.
The new attitude of empiricism is not what it professes
to be-an attempt to let nature "teach" us. The ad
hoc scientist is at least as guilty of coming to nature
with his mind already made up as ever the traditionalist was.

VI

In the preceding sections we have examined, mainly
without comment, arguments which can be brought
forward in favour of the ad hoe and positivist attitudes
in science. Since a study of the limitations of science
is so largely bound up with the type of science under
consideration, it will not be out of place if at this point
some brief comments upon these arguments are introduced.

We saw in the first place that the ad hoc attitude can
be justified by an appeal to the early history of physical
science. Here ad hoc concepts have often ultimately
become absorbed into the main body of knowledge and,
in any case, progress would have been impossible without them. How far is this analogy justified?

First of all it should be said, at once, that physics
itself has not been unified to the extent that is commonly imagined. It is still impossible to understand
how gravitational forces are related to magnetic and
electric forces. Even when we come to those branches
of physics which have been unified by relativity, it is
important to notice that the unification is numerical
only. The history of science shows how relatively easy
it may be to get numerically correct results on the
strength of false premises-the ancients were able to
calculate the speeds of rotations of the heavenly
spheres which were supposed to carry the stars and
by this means they were able to predict astronomical
phenomena successfully. In m o d e r n times, as O'Rahilly14 has reminded us, the mathematical equations of modern electromagnetic theory can be derived
from quite a variety of mutually inconsistent starting
premises. By way of example it is well known that
both corpuscular and non-corpuscular theories of electricity give rise to the same equations of flow when a
relatively large amount of electricity is under consideration.

Physical science sometimes deals with concepts which
are so far removed from everyday life and so difficult
to correlate with one another, that the attention of
the physicist is often devoted, not towards effecting
a true unification of ideas, but towards achieving numerical agreement only. This is particularly the case
in the well-known method of dimensional analysis. In
this, after a physical phenomenon has proved too difficult for analysis, a mathematical method shows how
its magnitude may be expected to vary when a change
is made in the magnitudes of the various physical factors with which it is supposed to be connected. Remarkable numerical predictions are thus obtained but
the agreement throws little light upon how the phenomenon in question occurs. For instance, we may
discover by dimensional analysis, that the drag on a
ship moving through the sea will vary with the square
of its velocity but we may still be in the dark as to
why there is any drag at all. Only in a very Pickwickian
sense can it be said that a problem solved by a dimensional method is a true unification of science.

Now relativity is a special case of dimensional analysis.15 It ignores the true physical connections between various branches of science but, by a
mathematical device, it shows how correct magnitudes of
physical quantities can be calculated. This is the true
significance of Einstein's achievement and, looking at
the matter from this point of view, we can at once see
how foolish it is to suppose that the theory of relativity will ever have its counterpart in biology. Few,
indeed, of the new ad hoe ideas of the inexact sciences
provide us with anything that can be measured and so
it becomes impossible to understand how any future
investigator will ever be able to side-track the scientific
connections between them and the older science, and
confine his attention to measurements.

Of course, all this is no argument against ad hoc
science as such. It would certainly appear that an ad
hoc approach to reality is often necessary, and indeed
unavoidable, though some will prefer not to use the
word "science" in connection with knowledge obtained
in this way. At all events, if we build up a system of
knowledge based upon ad hoe, ideas, we must learn
to recognise it for what it really is-a mere gleam of
light in an all-prevailing darkness. Moreover, we must
never forget that if knowledge gained by the ad hoe
method is to be dignified by the term "science", then we
also have every right to speak of theology as a science,
for theology also demands that we should recognise
and use a set of concepts suited to its own field.

It is profitless, of course, to debate the meaning of
mere words: the important point is that if we use the
word science to cover the inexact as well as the exact
sciences, we must remember that the meaning of the
word is not the same in the two cases.

Nowhere, perhaps, can this difference in the meaning of common words be better illustrated than in connection with the study of
causation.16 Let us suppose
that a physical experiment which involves, shall we
say, the flow of a liquid through a tube, is carried
out in the laboratory. A mathematical analysis indicates
that the flow should take place at a certain rate but
experiment shows that the actual rate differs from
that calculated by a significant amount. What is the
attitude of the exact scientist to this result? Does he
claim to have explained the phenomenon on the ground
that he can put forward various plausible suggestions
as to the factors which ought to be considered? Of
course he does
not. He admits candidly that the phenomenon cannot yet be explained.

The ad -hoc scientist, on the other hand, claims to
have explained a phenomenon if he can show, even
in the vaguest way, how it might be connected with
other factors. In sociology, biology, and most forms
of psychology, there is no pretense whatever at numerical agreement; it is enough to point to certain
antecedents and it is not even considered necessary
to say why these supposed causes should have produced what, in fact, they did produce and not something totally different. The existence of man, for instance, is explained on an evolutionary basis but no
one asks why man as we know him and not some
totally different creature was formed: far less is an
attempt made to show that an evolutionary process
would necessarily produce men of a particular size.
Biological "explanation" is clearly what the physicist
would describe as a lack of explanation. The word explain is used in different senses in the exact and
inexact sciences.

Again, this is not of course said in criticism. Biological problems are so complex that little better could
be achieved in any case. The mistake that has been
made is one of attitude. The ad hoe scientist sometimes
lacks a sense of humility: he takes over the words of
the exact sciences and forgets their original meaning.
He falls to notice that even the best explained fact
of biology must, from a physicist's point of view, be
regarded as unexplained.

The different language employed by the two kinds
of science is confusing to the layman. In some instances the old language of the exact sciences seems
to have been taken over quite deliberately to create
such, confusion-rationalist writers at all events frequently trade an the confusion. All arguments to the
effect that science can explain, say, religious experience or some historic miracle, are at root dishonest
attempts to make the public believe that the word
"explain" here has the very definite meaning that it
possesses in the exact sciences, whereas those who
make these claims should know very well that this
is not the case.

Of course if, by explain, we only mean that we can
suggest antecedent partial causes, no dishonesty is involved. In this limited sense we commonly "explain"

the acts of a criminal by pointing out that he did not
have a fair chance in life owing to his bad home conditions. Again, we "explain" the conversion of St. Paul
by saying that, after watching the heroic death of
Stephen, his unconscious mind must have been hard
at work and that a sudden realization that he was
"kicking against the pricks" was not unlikely to occur
in the case of so intelligent a man. All "explanations"
of this kind are legitimate in their way, provided we
realize fully what
we
mean by "explanation". If our
ideas on this point are clear
we
shall not be tempted
to argue that other causes must be excluded-we shall
not be so self-satisfied as to suppose for one moment
that our tentative suggestions imply that the criminal
was not responsible for his acts or that God did not
reveal Himself to St. Paul at an opportune moment.

The degree to which people can become satisfied
with a fragmentary explanation is often quite surprising. It is worth while pointing out that even in
physics no one would think of arguing in so careless
a manner. If we discover that the period of oscillation
of a drop depends on the radius of the drop raised to
the power of one and a half, we do not dream of supposing that the radius "explains" the period or that
other factors, such as the physical properties of the
liquid out of which the drop was made, are not involved. Thus scientific explanations often cannot be
treated as comprehensive even when exact numerical
agreement with prediction is obtained. We should naturally be all the more on our guard against a claim
to understand every factor involved when we are dealing with inexact sciences and ad hoc concepts.

Another point, all too little realized, is that by employing scientific concepts at all, we are selecting material for which scientific explanation is possible. To
use a well-worn analogy due to Eddington, we do not
expect a fisherman with a net of a very large mesh
to argue that there are no small fishes in the sea because he never catches any. No more can we discover
truths about a spiritual world if our methods of investigation precludes them from the start. And this
is precisely what the modern ad hoe method is deliberately designed to do. Lloyd Morgan is honest enough
when he says: "From a strictly emergent point of view
any notion of a so-called 'alien influx into nature' is barred".17

However, provided all these points are kept in mind,
there is no reason why certain types of ad hoe science
should not be welcomed by the Christian. Nor can we
set any bounds upon such science which may freely
invade the field of theology and revelation if a clearer
understanding is thereby attained. When God has seen
fit to reveal His truths to men, we may be sure He
has not done so arbitrarily-often, as in the conversion
of St. Paul, the way is prepared by antecedent factors
which it is the business of science to discover. It is
not science itself but the fantastic and ill-thought out
claims that are often made in its name that merit
opposition from all reasonable men.

VII

Something may now be said about the doctrine of positivism. According to the positivist, modern physics
has shown us that it is not possible to reach the
"absolute truth" about what lies at the back of nature.
We should not, therefore, waste time in attempting
the impossible: we should confine ourselves to discovering relations between things which we can
actually observe.

This argument rests on a failure to distinguish between measurable and purely qualitative truths. No
statement of the value of an incommensurable number, such as pi, is absolutely true, but it is absolutely
true that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter
of a circle is constant in a two dimensional world.
Similarly, statements about function and form may
often be absolutely true-a correct statement of the
function of a kidney or the structure of glucose will
remain true for all time. It is only when we seek the
answers to purely numerical questions, such as, for
example, "what is the velocity of the earth through
the ether?" that we find that we cannot reach answers
which are true for all observers.

Again, as Max Planck and Bavink have pointed out,18
the positivism of Ernst Mach and his followers only
ended in scientific stagnation. The chemist Ostwald,
even so late as 1904,19, was arguing that since atoms
were not observable, science must do without them.
With great ingenuity he tried to show how Dalton's
classical proofs of the atomic theory could be understood in terms of the facts of observation alone. But
the existence of atoms was soon confirmed without
a possibility of doubt. The amazing faith of the organic
chemist who had not hesitated to draw plans of thousands of complicated organic molecules constructed out
of unobservable atoms, proved to have been more than
justified. Since that time every science can add scores
of instances in which unobservable postulates were
later found to have a physical reality.

Attempts have sometimes been made to separate
observables into two classes, those theoretically unobservable (e.g., motion through the ether) and those
practically unobservable (e.g., the back of the moon
or the inside of the earth). It is claimed that physics
is only concerned with the elimination of the first
kind. A detailed discussion of this subject would be
out of place here but it would seem to the writer that
such a distinction assumes that we possess an infallible
way of distinguishing between the two kinds of unobservables. We must not forget that until the beginning of the present century it was supposed that atoms
and molecules, being far smaller than the wave length
of light, were theoretically unobservable. Again, in our
own day, the violent controversy which has been
aroused by Milne's cosmological theories has largely
centered round differences of opinion as to how various
classes of unobservables should be classified.

The frantic attempts20 which have been made by a
few writers to restate the Machian heresy that science
is only concerned with observable entities, nearly
always breaks down when it is asked whether a star
exists before it has been seen through a telescope.
Interminable discussion as to the meaning of the word
"exist" in such a case is profitless: the fact is that
positivism is not a tenable attitude and even the philosophers and the very few scientists who sponsor it rarely or never apply it consistently. Few of them would,
for instance, be prepared to consider a criticism of
history or of evolution on positivist lines.

Thus, although we may willingly admit that positivism has a certain value when we are dealing with
the purely numerical problems of physics, it would
seem that there is little reason for extending the
principle. Science, like religion, must often use the
eye of faith and seek to peer into realms which lie
beyond anything about which our senses can give us
direct information.

One further remark on the subject of positivism may
be made before leaving. Positivists may lie of two
kinds. Probably most of them would claim that all
discussion of what lies beyond our senses is profitless.
This is the variety of positivism which we have been
discussing up to the present point. But sometimes we
find positivists (Professor Dingle is an example) who
claim only that science should not discuss an unobservable world but allow that religion has a right to do so.

As the grounds for believing in positivism are, in
any case, so slender, this point of view hardly merits
detailed discussion here. But it is of interest because
this second type of positivism involves the view that
science and revelation are confined to different realms.
According to this view, therefore, science and religion
must be kept in idea tight compartments of the mind
and cannot impinge upon one another.

VIII

We must now turn to consider the sphere of revelation and its limitations, if any, with respect to science.

When, at the beginning of the scientific era, science
first began to meet with conspicuous success in its
attempts to explain the workings of nature, organized
Christianity reacted towards it with a tragic lack of
wisdom. At times attempts were made, by persecution
and threatening, to restore the status quo. When that
failed the church gave way on point after point.

A case2l can be made out for supposing that the
church systematically fought every new scientific idea
which impinged, even in a remote way, upon theology
or the Bible, until her opposition became so ridiculous
that it had to be abandoned. It has, however, been shown22 that this interpretation is unfair. At any
given epoch, radically new scientific ideas were always
opposed to the prevailing science of the time and it
was only natural that the church, in common with all
other non-specialists in scientific matters, should have
accepted the best available evidence of the time. Even
in the case of the evolution controversy, perhaps the
most bitter and tragic controversy that ever took place
between science and religion, the battle was at first
confined to powerful personalities in the scientific field
and in no way involved religion.23

Whatever the historical truth on such matters may
have been, the impression was created among the
masses and deliberately fostered by rationalist propaganda, that the church was fighting a
losing battle. The fantastic definition of a miracle as "an event that cannot be explained by
science"24 was exploited to the
full. The rationalist press presented the public with
the spectacle of science cheerfully explaining every new problem with which she was confronted, so that
the number of events which could properly be called
miraculous became fewer and fewer. Obviously science
was conquering all along the line. Religion-once the
proud possessor of all knowledge-was now, we were
told, being forced to take refuge in one very small
compartment of human experience-the part that deals
with mysticism and religious intuition. And the science
of psychology was already invading this sacred sanctuary. No reasonable person ought to
doubt that it would ultimately be as successful here as it had been everywhere else.

Such is the picture drawn by the self-satisfied rationalist, We have already examined its falsity from the
scientific side. We have now to examine the matter
from the religious angle.

It is clear that religion has involved itself in difficulties through its attempt to find a rigid definition
of miracle. To a discussion of this question we shall
therefore now turn.

At this point a consideration of the idea of causation
in the Bible is of great importance. Throughout the
Scriptures we continually observe that no systematic
attempt is made to distinguish between the direct and
the indirect working of God. Let us take a few
examples, almost at random, from the Book of Psalms.
God is the cause of storms (xxix); all nature is full
of His loving kindness (xxxiii, 5); He created the
heavens (xxxiii, 6) and now fashions the hearts of
all men (xxxiii, 15); He sends calamities Gx, 2), rain
and harvests Qxv, 9) and performs wonders for the
sake of His people (1xvi, 6, lxxvil, 14, lxxviii, etc.);
He provides food for the young lions when they roar
after their prey (civ, 21); He has beset us behind and
before and laid His hand upon us (cxxix, 5).

In the New Testament we encounter precisely the
same outlook. We are frequently reminded that God
showed His power through the miracles of our Lord
and that He finally raised Him from the dead. Nevertheless, according to the teaching of our Lord in the
Sermon on the Mount, it is God who sends day and
night, who clothes the lilies of the field and who sends
His gifts of rain and sunshine upon the evil as well
as upon the good.

From a study of these and similar passages the conclusion has been reached25 that neither the ancient
Hebrews, nor the Hebrew Christians of a later day,
were familiar with our sharp distinction between the
natural and the supernatural. This view certainly cannot be correct, for if this were really the case it is
difficult to see why particular works of God-the
plagues of Egypt or the resurrection of our Lord should have been regarded as more significant than,
shall we say, the clothing of the grass of the field. It
is certainly clear that from time immemorial a distinction has been drawn, at least occasionally, between
the natural and the supernatural. Even the Egyptian
magicians (Ex. viii, 19) were prepared to say, "This is the Finger of God" about certain
events but not about others.

Nevertheless, the passages that have been cited cer
tainly show that in the Hebrew-Christian tradition
nothing like the stress was placed upon the distinction
between the natural and the supernatural that came
to be placed upon it in later times. The Bible says
fearlessly that all events which are for the good of
man and beast are done by God. As a rule it does not
attempt to distinguish clearly as to whether these
events are performed by God in a direct or an indirect
manner. Our Lord knew well enough that each day
and night was not separately planned ahead by His
Father: what He stresses is the fact that the general
ordering of nature is the work of God.

Thus we see that, for the early Christians, as also
for the Jews, God was seen to be at work throughout
the whole of nature, sometimes directly but more often
indirectly-for nature itself was His handiwork. In
some cases (as in the resurrection of our Lord or the
giving of the spirit at Pentecost) God's work was so
immediate and so obvious that no one could reasonably
doubt that direct interventions had taken place. But at
other times-who could tell whether events were really
miraculous? And, in any case, what did it matter?
Enough that God had made the laws of the universe so
that everything that happened for the good of His
creation was a revelation of His character.

The rigid distinction between the natural and the
supernatural is a product of later times-a natural
development of the Biblical teaching to be sure, but
not there from the beginning. The problem must soon
have come to the fore in early Christian ages in connection with the miracles of the saints-for the church
came to regard miracles as a prerequisite for canonization and it naturally became important to know
whether unusual events in the lives of the saints
were genuinely miraculous.

But as in other familiar instances, doctrinal development created serious difficulties. After centuries of
argument, when the distinctions had been made with
infinite subtlety and apparent finality, the development
of science created a bewildering mass of new problems.
The old astronomy, with its angels pushing the stars
through the sky, collapsed like a house of cards. In
time even the odour of sanctity-the miraculous sweet
smell which exuded from the bodies of many of the
mediaeval saints shortly before they entered Paradise
-turned out to be nothing other than the production
of acetoacetic acid and acetone caused by faulty
metabolism in the diabetic. Even the bleeding host,
that most awful of miracles in which the transformed
element of the sacramental bread revealed the sufferings of our Lord, turned out to be nothing more
startling than the invasion of a bacillus. These and
many similar instances showed how tragically the
church had failed to draw the correct distinctions. No
wonder that the growth of science seemed to place
the Christian faith in a ridiculous light and to furnish
the religious antagonist with the most effective weapon
he had ever possessed.

The claims of rationalistic science against religion
are thus seen to have been the result of an attempt on
the part of the church to be wise above that which was
written~. Had Christians resolutely refused to pretend
that they knew enough about nature to be able to distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, difficulties would never have been encountered. The
Christian would have thanked God for every manifestation of His goodness: he would have spoken naturally
of God who made the lilies of the field, the stars, the lightnings, the rivers, the mountains, the sunsets, the
mineral veins and the works of good men. But he would
never have pretended to know whether these works
of God had come directly from His hand, or whether
they might not have been innumerable stages between
God the First Cause and the effects which give joy
and gladness to the hearts of men. As a result he
would have welcomed every reverent attempt to understand the means God has employed to produce the
wonderful things that we see around us, and all arguments of the type "Natural law can explain this or
that, so God is an unnecessary hypothesis" would have
seemed stupidly irrelevant.

Thus, if the Christian Church could have been saved
from the purely verbal wisdom of the middle ages with
its almost unlimited intellectual conceit inherited from
the ancients no warfare between science and religion
would have come about. Even the suggestion of the
possibility of such a warfare would have appeared
fantastically impossible. How irrelevant it might have
been may be illustrated by means of a simple analogy.
Suppose a girl receives a present through the post
from her lover, what would she think of a sceptically
minded person who told her that since she had only
received the present from the postman she should
cease to attribute it to the original sender? Would she
not at once reply "What does it matter whether he
gave it to me himself or whether he used collectors,
sorting officers, the railways and finally the postman
to send it to me? His motives are the same in either
case." In the same way science studies the means
whereby God fulfils His purposes and no amount of
study of the means can ever explain away the purposes
themselves.

The Christian must insist, therefore, upon his right
to interpret nature in the light of the revelation of
God given by Jesus Christ. He must be completely free,
even as Jesus was, to see the workings of God in any
direction in which the teleological evidence indicates
that He has been at work. There must be no question
whatever of invoking God as an explanatory principle
only when science fails to produce an explanation: the
Christian outlook can recognize no limitations in relation to science. Only when our minds are free to see
the workings of God in any and every direction in
which He may have been at work, shall our hearts
overflow with thankfulness for the beauty of the world
in which He has placed us for His glory.

This is the true Christian attitude towards the matter
we have been discussing. When once it has been wholeheartedly adopted, it creates its own safeguard against
narrowness and prejudice. For the Christian will
realize that science also has an unlimited right to
pursue her investigations of the immediate causes of
things and he will rejoice in every fresh discovery
she makes-unless it is a discovery for evil. The Christian who returns to the early Hebrew-Christian tradition of thought will never forget, moreover, that when,
in Holy Writ, we are told that certain things were
done by God we are not told whether God saw fit to
use natural means for accomplishing His purposes.
So if it should turn out that some of the things which
are generally thought to involve God's immediate creative power could, in fact, have come about by natural
means, he will accept the discovery joyfully. In some
cases this has already occurred-there is no reason to
think that God performed a special miracle when He
set His bow in the cloud as a token of His covenant
that He would not again destroy the earth with water.
But the Christian-and let us hope not the Christian
alone-will rightly complain if, on the one hand scientific explanations are misused to eliminate God from
His creation or if, on the other hand they turn out to
be mere verbal subtleties which are neither scientific
nor explanatory.

In addition to the danger of misusing religion in
order to oppose science, there is also another danger.
In science we sometimes find that a principle, sound as
far as it goes, is misapplied to realms of knowledge for
which it was never intended with results that are often
harmful and ludicrous. Those who would see the workings of God in nature are faced with an exactly parallel
danger. Clearly we must not feel it incumbent upon
ourselves to suppose that everything in nature is to be
explained in terms of the plans of God. Indeed, this will
clearly not be the case. In achieving one plan, a score
of unintended results may also follow of necessity. If
we suppose, for example, that God deliberately made
the world beautiful, then the beauty perhaps, of submicroscopic forms of life, which is unlikely to make
man happy, may also have followed from necessity.
Clearly every point must be considered on its own
merits and we must be careful never to force facts
into grooves into which they do not naturally fit. As an
example of the type of detailed explanation of Providence of which we must ever beware, we may cite the
mediaeval theory that God made the bed-bugs to wake
us up in the morning and thus to save us from laziness!

While we must always be humble in our supposed
understanding of the details of Providence this does not
mean that the religious interpretation can itself be
thrown overboard on account of a few facts which do
not fit readily within the general scheme. When we find
that science fails to explain a phenomenon we do not
abandon science. No more should we abandon our Lord's
interpretation because, on rare occasions, we do not
understand how it can be applied to a particular problem. Rather must we continue to look for light and
remember that the mass of evidence in support of a
Divine plan in nature cannot be set aside because we
are too dull-witted to see our way through certain
difficulties.

Finally, just as the scientific approach fills our minds
with humility when we contemplate how little we
know, so the religious approach will produce the same
effect. God's ways are greater than our ways and His
thoughts than our thoughts, nor can we ever hope to
do more than scratch the surface of the vast oceans
of unknown truth that lie around us.

Discussion

The Chairman said: Dr. Clark has performed a very
useful service in defining the methods and the scope
of science. Much of the conflict between science and
religion has arisen from confusion on the subject of
what is science and what is religion. It is therefore
of the utmost importance that we should have a clearer
idea of their respective provinces. In former days it
was the church that stepped out of its province and
dictated to men what they should believe about the
physical world around them. In these days it is often
the scientists who repeat this error. The mistake is
made not so much by the great scientists as by those
of lesser calibre. Because science now speaks with great
authority many people are misled by these irresponsible statements. Science has such great achievements
to her credit that uncritical people have implicit faith
in her pronouncements. It is therefore of the utmost
importance that everybody should have a clearer idea
of the modus operandi and the limitations of the
scientist. Some people have made the definition of
science so wide that they consider it to be tantamount
to organized knowledge. If this were true, then, everything would come within the scope of the scientist, including what was once called the Queen of the Sciences,
theology. As Dr. Clark has said: "It is not science it
self but the fantastic and ill-thought out claims that
are often made in its name that merit opposition from
all reasonable men."

I regard it as being the function of a Chairman to
encourage discussion and I now leave it to others to
speak on this important subject, "The Spheres of Revelation and Science". I am glad to see that there are
many young people present and I would particularly
invite them to give us their views.

Mr. Charles H. Welch said: In the paper submitted
by Dr. Clark is the statement: "If all the facts were
known, no disagreement between science and religion
would ultimately remain."

It should be held before the mind constantly that
"Truth" is "Relationship", and when all relationships
are known, all truth will be known also. If I say "No.
12, Queen Anne's Gate" I make a statement, but I can
scarcely say that I have uttered a "truth". Such a
statement cannot be approved or refuted, it neither
affirms nor denies, and it is impossible to act upon
it. If, however, I say "No. 12, Queen Anne's Gate is
the address of the Victoria Institute," I utter a "truth,"
because I have discovered and affirmed a relationship.

The paper submitted by Dr. Clark while insisting
on the separate spheres of Revelation and Science, very
wisely urges all, whether Scientists or Theologians, to
remember that their discoveries, until related, will not
lead them to the goal unto which each in his separate
way hopes to attain.

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Mr. W. F. Spanner, wrote: When Dr. Clark states
that the "church" has always stood for a policy of
secrecy, I presume he means the Roman Catholic
church. His statement is not wholly true of the Protestant Reformed churches which have insisted
.-enerally on freedom for learned men to investigate the
truth, and have also been prepared to tolerate unlearned speculations by men who desired to air their
own opinions. Such investigations hold out the possibility of enlarging the church's understanding of the
sacred scriptures; but whilst this is true the churches
loyal to the Reformed tradition have never allowed
the special revelation given in the Holy Scriptures to
be wrenched from their grasp. Care has also to be
taken in exercising discrimination between what is
genuine learning based on concrete evidence and what
is merely fanciful speculation. I think the value of this
paper would have been increased had Dr. Clark distinguished between the attitude of different branches
of the church (i.e., Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist) to the question of freedom
for science and speculation. Perhaps 'he will deal with
this point in his reply.

It seems to me that whilst this paper has many
excellences and Dr. Clark has placed us under a debt
it does not quite succeed in giving a clear view of what
it sets out to do, namely, define the limits between
revelation and science. I think more attention is required to defining our terms. I take it that science is
simply "classified knowledge," or "systematized knowledge"; and it has to be carefully distinguished from
what is merely speculation. I think that theology is
still rightly to be regarded as the "Queen of the
Sciences" because it deals with the systematization of
the highest knowledge of which man is capable, namely,
the knowledge of God. Such theology falls naturally
into two departments; natural theology which deals
with the general revelation God has given to us
through the ordinary course of nature, and Special theology which deals with the special revelation of
Himself which God has given in the Holy Scriptures,
which revelation was added because of sin. Again, true
theology must be distinguished from mere philosophical
speculation dressed up as theology.

Revelation, I take it, is God's revealing of Himself
to mankind and consists of general revelation given
through the ordinary course of nature, and special
revelation given through the medium of the Holy
Scriptures. The voice of conscience and the sense of
the beauties and the joys of life (What man is there
anywhere who does not count life to be valuable?
This being so all men are under a self-confessed
obligation to give thanks to God) are part of general
revelation and if man were untainted by sin would
be sufficient to give a complete knowledge of God as
his Lord and Creator. The Holy Scriptures were necessarily added because of sin and to reveal God as
Redeemer.

Agnostic scientists may benefit us greatly insofar
as their efforts are genuinely devoted to an appraisal
of the true facts of nature, but we may be seriously
led astray if we do not take care to separate the facts
from the fancies. We live in days when there is a
strong tendency to endeavour to force facts to fit into
preconceived fanciful theories in the interests of the
prevailing Modernist philosophy which has as its root
principle the glorification of man in place of the glory
of God.

I have poorly expressed what I wanted to say, but
trust it may assist towards a better harmonizing of
modern knowledge with faith.

To sum up on the basis of the foregoing remarks, I
suggest that true science (carefully checked by close
attention to the facts, and sifted from fanciful speculation) is best considered as the intellectual aspect of
revelation. All of us according to the measure of the
understanding which God has given unto us may behold
something of the glory of God In the intellectual
mirror called science.

FOOTNOTES1. The Mission of Science. Presidential Address to the
Royal Society, Nov. 30, 1945.

2. See E. T. Whittaker, History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity,
1910.

5. The physical examples Lloyd Morgan cited in order to
illustrate these assertions were generally unfortunate. Thus, he was of the opinion (Gifford Lectures. Emergent Evolution, 1923, p. 66,
etc.) that no amount of study of single atoms
would enable us to predict the way in which they would group
together to form a crystal or liquid at a lower temperature.
The very thing which Lloyd Morgan deemed to be impossible
has since been accomplished. A study of the deviations of
gaseous argon from the classical gas laws has enabled the exact
positions of the atoms in the crystal lattice to be predicted
successfully.

15. J. Mackaye, The Physical Cause Back of the Relativity
Equations, journal of the Franklin Institute, 1934, 218, 343. In
this connection the interesting criticism of relativity by A.
Eagle (Trans. Victoria Inst., 1938, 70, 177) should be noted.

16. See R. 0. Kapp, Science versus Materialism, 1940, p.
202 ff. for an able discussion of the meaning of causation and
explanation in scientific thought.

17. Emergent Evolution, p. 13

18. See B. Bavink, The Anatomy of Modern Science, 11932,
p. 31 ff.

19. Journal of the Chemical Society, 85, 506.

20. Professor Dingle, in his Through Science to Philosophy,
never really faces this issue. Dr. Philipp Frank, who still bravely adheres to the positivist faith in his book
Between
Physics and Philosophy (1941), writes as if encumbered by
unanswerable perplexities and frankly admits that very few,
if any, scientific workers in the world, outside the original
Vienna circle, agree with him.

21.
A. D. White, History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology, 1896, etc.

24. Unfortunately this definition has often been seriously put forward by Christians. Thus C. A. Row, in a well-known,
popular work of Christian apologetic, defines a miracle as
"an event for the occurrence of which no forces, or combina
tion of forces is able to account" (A Manual of Christian Evidences 10th
ed. 1899, p. 8) Examples of such
indiscretions could easily be multiplied.